The Kurt Schwitters Foundation is very pleased to announce that The Bogside Artists in Derry have been awarded the annual Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Fellowship for 2014/15.
The Fellowship is awarded annually to artists who have distinguished themselves through their commitment to promoting wider community engagement and public understanding of the social role of the arts.
The award is also made in recognition of the vital role that artists today who, like Kurt Schwitters’ earlier stand against Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s/40s, continue to play in making a stand against all forms of political oppression, sectarian intimidation, and fascist tendencies now evident in some current political and social contexts, in these islands and internationally.
The award provides a bursary that will involve the Bogside Artists in undertaking a major public art commission of their own choosing, either in England, and/or in Palestine (by agreement with the Palestinian Authorities) over the next 12 months.
The award presentation took place on Friday 25th July 2014 at a major gathering of artists and cultural organistions at the site of Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn in the South Lakeland District of Cumbria <www.merzbarn.net> .
Schwitters is rightly considered by many as Germany's Picasso and a leading light of the Dadaist Movement. The struggles of the Bogside Artists against the suppression of their work by the Sinn Fein/DUP alliance that rule the six counties of the North of Ireland in many ways echo the fate of Schwitters himself during and after his exile from Germany prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.
For further information please contact:
Dr. Ian Hunter
Director of the Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Project
Kurt Schwitters in England Foundation
Cylinders Estate, Elterwater,
Cumbria, UK LA 22 9JB
Contact
Dr. Ian Hunter
